The state's business community hopes the change in administration in the next week will help end a leadership vacuum and provide more certainty as Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul has pledged a renewed focus on addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. 

"The COVID-19 health and economic crisis creates new challenges daily for the more than 2 million small businesses that call New York home," said NFIB New York Senior State Director Greg Biryla. "To defeat COVID, every New Yorker, every stakeholder, and every contributor to our economy needs to work together with some common purpose. That can’t happen without clear, decisive, and trusted leadership in state government, which has been eroded and destroyed in recent months."

The resurgence of the virus amid the spread of the more contagious delta variant of COVID-19 has led to a sharp increase in positive cases, as well as hospitalizations. There are now more than 1,800 people hospitalized in New York due to the virus. 

The pandemic and growth in COVID-19 cases is likely to be among the key issues Hochul will deal with when she takes office next week, succeeding scandal-scarred Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The outgoing governor, though, continues to wield power. On Monday, he announced all health care workers in New York must be vaccinated, with all workers in hospitals and long-term care facilities expected to have their first shots by Sept. 27. 

For business groups like NFIB, the change in administration is being welcomed in part due to Hochul's resume.

"Lt. Gov. Hochul has a record of collaboration, bipartisanship, and pragmatic problem-solving during her years of public service in the State Capitol, Congress, Erie County, and Hamburg Town Hall," Biryla said. "She has long championed the importance and value of small business, and we have every expectation that will continue."